MO BETTA MOORE:

So far, Brooks's political career has been a lot of spite and little substance. In Congress, he's blamed rising sea levels on rocks falling in the water. (Whenever I mention that, somebody thinks I made it up, but that happened.) He has undermined the leadership of better Alabama officials, like when he called Gov. Kay Ivey's coronavirus mitigation efforts "nanny-state" directives, all while not having the sense to delete his dumbest tweets about the virus. Last February he shared death tolls from around the world.

"American healthcare: ZERO dead," he said. "Think about it."

After a half-million lives lost, we've had time to think about it. He still hasn't.

In January, Brooks led efforts to overturn a lawful presidential election and he still refuses to acknowledge the "fraud" he alleged has been dismissed or disproven in the courts.

The most effective thing he might have ever done was stoking a crowd of insurrectionists to pay a visit to the U.S. Capitol before they left Washington on January 6.

But he refuses to own it.

As the same folks he told to "start taking down names and kicking ass" beat up police officers and ransacked the Capitol, Brooks blamed Antifa. After he was called out for his incendiary comments to the mob, he insisted he was talking about 2022 elections.

Brooks is the type of political arsonist who'll strike the match and blame the fire department when it shows up to put out the fire.

This week, Brooks sent out invitations announcing former Trump advisor Stephen Miller would be joining him for his campaign announcement, perhaps because the actual Devil had other business next week. Miller, like Brooks, shares a deep disdain for immigrants, whom he's scapegoated and targeted for abuse. In the White House, Miller successfully advocated separating children from immigrant parents at the border, a policy even his old boss Jeff Sessions now regrets.

After Brooks's colleagues in the U.S. House proposed censuring him for his role in the Jan. 6 insurgency, Brooks published a bizarre, meandering diatribe online, boasting of, among many other things, his safe driving record and the fact he's never smoked a cigarette. If anyone is hoping some woman, or man, might come forward to end Brooks's career like Moore's, they could be waiting for a long time.

What you see is what you're going to get. And that should be enough to disqualify him.

Brooks has learned nothing in the last few years. But the question is, have we?

Tweet   @brothersjudd